We had a random post in an anarchist community on our Polish speaking instance. Some 45 English speaking accounts came out of nowhere to downvote it, with a single one engaging in discussion. None of them were ever active on the instance, nor particularly in this community. Seems they just followed every crosspost.
Mods could not really do anything about it, so the accounts were banned from the entire instance by admins, as this was considered hostile behaviour against our community.
Which rises the question; should people be able to vote, end specially downvote, in communities they are not a part of? Maybe this could be at least a setting?
Another interesting concept that came from the discussion over that was “constructive downvote” - requirement of commenting why one downvotes a post.
If you know who is being toxic, you can block them.
Sure, but it doesn’t stop their votes from impacting what you see. So it’s just adding an extra annoying step for you, without solving the underlying problem. In fact, I’d say it’s an even worse experience because instead of seeing a post with 30 downvotes and 2 comments, you’ll see a post with 30 downvotes and 32 comments, but they’ll either all be low effort garbage, or they’ll be invisible (because you blocked them). I imagine the moderators don’t want to deal with an influx of reports about this, either; especially because they don’t need the extra step to see who’s doing it and ban them at the community level.
I see your point.
I think I would still like it. I don’t have a problem with it not being implemented because other people wouldn’t like it.